Sofia Cacherano di Bricherasio
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Born in 1867, Sofia Cacherano di Bricherasio was the eldest daughter of Luigi Cacherano di Bricherasio and Teresa Massel di Caresana. She travelled widely across Europe in her youth, before settling down to an aristocratic life in the family homes in Turin, Fubine, and Miradolo.
Her talent and passion for painting led her to exhibit at the first Venice Biennale. She is remembered for her welfare work and economic foresight and for her close friendships with leading names on the cultural scene of the age, becoming the center of a true cenacle. Alongside Lorenzo Delleani, her teacher and a famous landscape painter of the era, and the clique of artists around him, there was also the sculptor Leonardo Bistolfi, the composer Alfredo Casella, and Captain Federico Caprilli, the cavalry officer who revolutionized the equestrian jumping seat.
The turn of the century, however, brought tragedy to her life, with the deaths of her brother Emanuele, her friend Federico Caprilli, her teacher Delleani, and both her uncles. In the space of just a few years, Sofia was left with just her mother, Teresa Massel, without other close family members and without her closest friends. The gradual extinction of all the other lines of the family house left her the sole heiress of an enormous estate, which she would administer wisely over the course of her life. In those years, she gradually turned away from painting to focus on charitable works and community welfare, opening the “Piedmontese School of Bandera Embroidery” and a nursery school in Fubine. The last paintings she produced were exhibited in 1913 at the 2nd International Fine Arts Exhibition in Turin. With titles such as “Sun in the Mist,” “Austere Solitude,” and “Grey Harmonies,” they seem to say much about the spirit of the age.
Sofia never married. After her mother died in 1923, she began donating a part of her properties to religious institutions. During the Second World War she left her habitual home in Turin and moved permanently to Miradolo, bringing with her the family’s possessions and archive.
She died here in Miradolo Castle in 1950. With no heirs, she bequeathed her estate by will to Don Luigi Orione’s Little Work of Divine Providence.
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